Thus began a morning unlike any other. Sissy showed Arrietty where Beauty and her mother came and ate with the other cows, at the feeding shed north of the farm yard. The cows were all out grazing by then, so there was nothing but mud and cowpies and prints and Sissy's horse. They fed the horse a carrot and were duly slobbered on. They went egg-hunting in the henhouse and the weed-choked yard behind it and got pecked, helped with chores in the kitchen, then went to the barn at Carol's request to find a pair of kittens she had promised a neighbor.
"Is this," Arrietty asked, "the barn that's haunted?"
They paused in the doorway, taking in the dim interior. It was a modest structure, but the high roof made it feel bigger than it was, and there was not much inside to make it feel smaller. Too many careless managers let barns become repositories of broken equipment or old cars; this barn, though, was clean and neat. Stanchions lined both walls; that was where the cows were milked. Towards the back Arrietty saw closets or sheds against the inside wall; these held medicine and equipment. The very back wall was mostly given over to large double doors that would open out on the pasture. As with many dairy herds, the cows did not need to be encouraged to come inside for milking, and would walk themselves right into the stanchions.
"Without the cows here, it's so quiet. It does feel kind of haunted!" Sissy shuddered delightfully, but Arrietty was only wondering what the maid had seen.
"Is it really haunted?" Arrietty asked matter-of-factly.
"It's supposed to be."
"But have you seen anything?"
"Oh, all right, so I haven't - it's just that things go missing sometimes. It's still fun to think about. Come on, the kittens are probably up in the hayloft."
"What kinds of things?"
"Oh, just little things - nuts and bolts and spools of twine and chips of salt block and some of the sweet feed..."
Sissy darted to the right, up the stairs to the hayloft. There was a trapdoor at the top; she heaved it open, spilling the scent of hay and a square of reflected light down on the stairs. Arrietty, at the foot of the stairs, paused and knelt. Her sensitive fingers traced one of the balusters. The stairs were made of split wood that had been cured and then nailed together. She got a splinter for her troubles, but...
Sissy poked her head over the edge of the trapdoor. "What are you waiting for?"
"Just a second." Arrietty could be artful herself when the occasion demanded it. "Got a splinter."
"Oh." Sissy disappeared.
Arrietty picked the splinter out and leaned in to get a good hard look at the right-hand newel, the post at the bottom that supported the handrail. As she'd thought; a knothole. She touched it, ever so lightly. It gave under her band-aided fingers. It was five inches off the ground; an easy reach for an adult Borrower.
"Hmm," she said aloud. "These splinters are nasty."
Meanwhile, she pulled the tail of the blouse up through the yoke of the overalls and wrenched off one of the pearl buttons. She took the one from the bottom, so it wouldn't show, and tucked the blouse back in. Then she dropped the button by the newel as she stood up. She felt a little bad about damaging the blouse but, she reminded herself, it had already been Borrowed once and didn't really belong to anyone now.
"Here I come," she called loudly, and stomped up the stairs.
X X X
The hayloft, too, had a high ceiling and double doors toward the pasture, but these doors were for throwing fodder out, and they were shut right now. Still, sunlight spilled in through the cracks in the walls, and the whole space was suffused with a golden glow because of the clean, sweet, reflective hay.
The kittens were indeed in the hayloft, but they half wild and weren't interested in being caught once they realized that the girls had no food. It took a flour sack, two sardines from the kitchen, and a great deal of patience and coaxing before they were finally able to scoop up two squirming furballs.
"Come on, you guys," Sissy griped, when one of them scratched her through her shirt sleeve. "You'll be a lot happier in a house where some suburbanite will have nothing to do but spoil you."
Arrietty worked out a careful compromise with "her" kitten as she carried it toward the trap door. She would keep it comfortably tucked against her chest, and it would purr spiritedly and try to bap her on the nose - but that, she figured, was better than getting scratched.
Arrietty waited while Sissy tried to pry the trap door up with one hand - she had shut it while they hunted kittens so neither of them would forget and fall down it accidentally - and balance her kitten with the other. That was when Arrietty heard it. Her name.
"Arrietty!"
It was a small voice, but gruff and deep all at the same time. Sissy was busy wrestling with the trap door and hadn't noticed. Arrietty glanced left and right, back, down...
"Arrietty!"
She knelt on the boards, holding the kitten firmly. A pile of straw parted in front of her.
"Spiller!"
"What?" Sissy said distractedly. Her kitten almost got away; she grabbed with both hands and caught it, but the trap door fell closed and she had to start all over again. "Oh bother!"
"Just talking to the kitten," Arrietty said lightly. "Shh, kitty, he's not good to eat."
The kitten was still interested in trying. He extended a curious paw Spiller's way; Arrietty intercepted, closing her fingers gently over the tiny claws. To Spiller, they were the size of fingers. She wondered if Niya would treat Spiller like a friend. Was Niya smart enough to recognize Borrowers as a category, even if he'd never been properly introduced to certain ones? "Spiller, how on earth did you get here? How did you get past the cats?"
Spiller, as usual, wasn't interested in giving her details. He marched across the straw, ignoring the kitten, and grabbed her big finger. He tugged. "Arrietty come home now."
So that was it. He must have seen; he might even have hitched a ride on the truck. She didn't see how else he could have gotten here so fast, even if he could practically fly. "I can't!" she hissed. "Don't you understand? There's nothing for me to eat or wear, and if I go back people will see me by the dugout burrow and then -"
She was choking up. The kitten got one paw free and snagged Spiller's furry wrap. Arrietty gasped and quickly extracted the wayward paw. Spiller blinked stoically. No harm done. "Tell Mama and Father -"
"Did he scratch you?" Sissy called.
"No," Arrietty said hastily. Her back was toward Sissy, blocking Spiller from view. "Well yes, but not bad."
"Come on then. I finally got it open." Sissy dropped the trap door on the floor, making Spiller wobble when the floorboards vibrated, and started backing carefully down the stairs.
"'Kay." Arrietty made a show of gathering up the kitten. Under her breath she said, "There are Borrowers here, in this barn. I think. Tell Mama; tell Father. Maybe this is a better place to live for them. Maybe -"
"Know that," Spiller grumbled. "Cats tame."
"Eh? You mean the Borrowers have tamed the cats here?"
"She's coming," she heard Sissy calling out from downstairs.
"I'll come back - when I can!" Arrietty scrambled for the trap door. She didn't want Sissy to come back up and spot Spiller. "Be careful!"
Spiller was so small, so very small and vulnerable. Even if the cats in the barn were Borrower-tame - and the kitten had seemed more curious than predatory - still...
She suddenly ached with fear for him, for her parents. Her breath came shorter. It was such a big, hostile world out there...
She hardly noticed - though she did - that the button was gone.
Carol was waiting for them by the front door of the farm house. "Good timing," she panted; she'd jogged through the house and was out of breath. She scooped the kittens out of their arms. "I'll take care of these. Sissy, you and Arrietty go fetch three quarts from this morning's milking - raw milk, y'hear? I have a customer out front and my knees are bothering me. Take it to her."
"Sure." Sissy had done this many times before. She grabbed Arrietty's hand and pulled her into the house, into the kitchen, then opened a door Arrietty hadn't noticed before and plunged down a flight of stairs into the cellar.
"Ma has a touch of arthritis," she explained over her shoulder. "It hurts if she goes up and down the stairs too much."
"Oh." Arrietty followed as Sissy hopped off the bottom step into a dark space and groped along the wall for a light switch.
"Here we are. Help me."
Arrietty got beside her and helped pry up the lid to an old-fashioned stone cooler. Then she held the lid while Sissy plunged her arms up to the elbows in the ice-cold water and fished out three quart jars.
"This is nice," Sissy remarked. "Usually I have to move the lid, then get the jars, then put them down, then move the lid again, then pick up the jars... I'm glad you're here."
Arrietty couldn't stop the warm glow that spread across her chest and crept up her face into a smile. "Me too," she said softly.
She wasn't so glad when Sissy said "Here" and gave her one of the jars. Arrietty hissed. It was incredibly cold.
"Good milk is a delicate product, like wine or - or something," Sissy said, handing her the next two. "It needs to be chilled quickly and kept cold to retain its flavor. Hurts against your skin though, doesn't it? I think that's the other reason Ma sends me down here to get it."
At least Sissy took two of the jars back once she'd closed the cooler. "Try not to trip," she said, and led the way back up the stairs.
"Have you ever tripped?"
"The customers wait outside the kitchen door," Sissy said, pretending not to hear.
Hmm.
Instead of morning's soft red hues, the gravel reflected the heat of the noonday sun. The farmer's truck was gone now, along with the farmer. In its place hummed a smaller vehicle. An elderly woman stepped out of the driver's seat. She had a picnic cooler in her hand.
"Thank you, dears," she said, and set the cooler down. She took the jars from Sissy, one by one, and put them in the cooler; it was half full of ice, and the jars went down with an almost musical crackling-squelching sound. "I heard this was good for someone who'd been hit hard by antibiotics. How much do I owe you?"
As the lady opened her purse, she stepped to one side to get around the cooler. Arrietty gasped. There was a passenger. He was looking tiredly out the window, chin propped on his wrist.
"Sho."